Mac and PC or one or the other?

[The IT Monkey]

Okay,
I am sold. I want to do a five box set up. But do NOT want to spend the huge cash layout (not to mention all the room it would take in my living room). I have one pc that is pretty kick arse (okay, it was kick arse two years ago... but) and I recently aquired a mac mini (1.66 core duo).
What I would like to do is set up four alts on the mac mini and have them follow me around on the main run from my pc. I would get an aditional monitor for the mac.
Do you think that would work or would the whole keyboard mouse thing be completely messed up?

If so how about running all five from the mac mini?

Thanks in advance,
-J (The IT Monkey)

[Wilbur]

You'd need to upgrade the GPU and you'd need a fair bit of RAM, but it should run ok, also I don't know how you'd effectively transmit keys to the others.

[The IT Monkey]

I was thinking of setting up xkeys for the mac and just having them follow me around and assist.

The ram is doable... don't know about the GPU as it's a mini (are those things upgradable?). The current specs of the mini's GPU is "intel gma 950 GPU. 64MB of SHARED ram"

[Wilbur]

Yeah, see thats a tiny graphics card, and its integrated graphics so that won't play games *at all* well. Your best bet would be too see if the GPU is upgradeable, if its not, you'll be best served to buy a PC, Dual or Quad core, with a decent amount of RAM and a decent GPU. I don't really see a Mac being as good or as versatile for Gaming as a PC (simply because games are MADE for PCs).

[vultuk]

(simply because games are MADE for PCs).

I'm sorry to say, Games are made for Games Machines. PC's are made for Productivity, DTP, Graphics etc. And mac's were originally made with High Graphic applications in mind for use with photography, 3D packages and also music software. :P

I challenge anyone to find fault with my Mac running Warcraft, I can Dual Box on it in full graphics in both windows and it still runs great.

As for the mac mini, I had forgotten in a previous post that mac mini's were not dedicated graphics and there is a good chance you will not be able to run 4 boxes on it without running into lag problems. And no, unless things have seriously changed in the last 18 months the GPU is not upgradeable.

If you are using X Keys then at least you shouldn't need to worry about broadcasting problems you'd have between a PC and a Mac. But speed may be an issue.

Depending on your party set up (i'm presuming you're planning on 5 squishies or 4 squishies and a tank but....) if you have the tank, healer and 3 squishies it may be worth trying the 3 squishies on your mac and tank and healer on the PC. That way you can control the two you need most control over (imo) with the main computer you'd be using and just hit X Keys to make the squishies Nuke.

[The IT Monkey]

From my experiments last night I think I am just gonna stick with pc due to the fact that there is so much support already out there. I don't know jack about apple scripting and it looks like you (vultuk) do and had to use that to get keys to pass to multiple windows. At this point in time I have access to multiple laptops and from a test I ran I was able to get two instances on one laptop running pretty smooth (frame rate wise, still figuring out pass-through and what-not)

Thanks for everyones input but for now I think I'll stick with my PC.

Oh, vultuk, I agree that Apple macs a fine machine, too bad not as many companies are as farsighted as Blizzard in porting their games to mac. Although, it does seem that most games that are WORTH playing eventually do come to mac so if you don't mind getting your games a bit behind the curve it is a nice filter to get rid of the crud games that come out.